Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, published in Washington in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, which developed and flew the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It traces the U-2's development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960, and later operations. One section is titled U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK.
Secr Chapter 2 70 First flight of the U-2, 4 August 1955 CO5653421 UNCLASSIFIED With Kelly Johnson watching from a chase plane and giving a con- stant stream of instructions, LeVier made three more unsuccessful landing attempts. With the light fading and a thunderstorm fast ap- proaching from the mountains to the west, LeVier made one last ap- proach using the method he had advocated: letting the aircraft touch on its rear wheel first. This time the U-2 made a near-perfect landing, which came just in the nick of time. Ten minutes later, the thunder- storm began dumping an unheard-of 2 inches of rain, flooding the dry lakebed and making the airstrip unusable.'' Now that the first problems in flying and landing the U-2 had been worked out, Kelly Johnson scheduled the "official" first flight for 8 August 1955. This time outsiders were present, including Richard Bissell, Col. Osmond Ritland, Richard Horner, and Garrison Norton. The U-2 flew to 32,000 feet and performed very well. Kelly Johnson had met his eight-month deadline." " Ibid.. pp. 21-22: Johnson, "Log for Project X," 4 August 1955. " Johnson. "Log for Project X," 8 August 1955. UNCLASSIFIED
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.